Perplexity keeps its distance from the AI listing rush

Published: 2026-06-10T12:04:42.000Z

While the rest of the AI world races toward the public markets, Perplexity is making a point of staying put. The AI search startup intends to go public in 2028, and its CEO says that timeline is not changing no matter how the imminent listings of its much larger rivals play out.

I've got rich, current detail from many sources. This is a US AI story, so I'll connect it to MENA via the Gulf's heavy stake in the AI IPO wave. Here's the piece. While the rest of the AI world races toward the public markets, Perplexity is making a point of staying put. The AI search startup intends to go public in 2028, and chief executive Aravind Srinivas says that timeline is not changing no matter how the imminent listings of its much larger rivals play out. In an interview that aired this week, he made the company's position plain, saying that independent of those other firms, Perplexity had always been planning for something around 2028, and that remains the case. With OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX all rushing toward the exits within days of one another, his calm is a deliberate contrast. The backdrop makes the restraint notable. SpaceX is pricing what would be a record breaking $75 billion offering this week at a valuation near $1.75 trillion, while Anthropic and OpenAI have both filed confidentially for listings that could each land near or above the trillion dollar mark, with Anthropic valued around $965 billion and OpenAI around $852 billion. Three of the largest technology IPOs in history are potentially queuing up at once. For a younger, smaller company, the temptation to ride that wave would be obvious, which makes Perplexity's decision to wait a statement about how it sees its own footing. Srinivas is not pretending the outcomes elsewhere are irrelevant to him. He was candid that if those big listings stumble, there will be ripple effects across the whole sector, with no way to sugarcoat it. He singled out the SpaceX debut as a leading indicator of how investors will receive Anthropic and OpenAI, though he expects all of them to do well, arguing that strong reception matters for the entire AI industry. His one caveat was pointed, that these lofty valuations only hold if the companies keep pushing the frontier, and that going six months without a meaningful leap in model capability is when the numbers start to look shaky. There is also a strategy embedded in the patience. Perplexity's business chief framed the consistent 2028 target as the very thing that let the company build a healthy, high growth business rather than a constraint holding it back. The startup reported around $450 million in annualized revenue earlier this year and is aiming for roughly $656 million by year end, running a deliberately cost efficient model that leans on whichever AI system, including cheaper open source options, gets a given job done. Srinivas argues that waiting a year or two positions the company differently from the pack. The regional angle is unusually direct here. Gulf sovereign funds have become central financiers of this exact IPO wave, with Qatar's QIA and Abu Dhabi's MGX holding stakes across Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI, and Saudi money flowing in too. For Middle Eastern investors with deep exposure to the frontier labs, how these debuts perform is not abstract, and a disciplined holdout like Perplexity is a reminder that not every AI darling is in a hurry to cash in.